


How the Father Would Have Written the Son

by Starbelliedgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Experimental Style, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28036761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbelliedgirl/pseuds/Starbelliedgirl
Summary: Castiel had not been written this way.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 11





	How the Father Would Have Written the Son

He doesn’t fall--not twice, not once in my kitchen, engulfed in archangel light, not again with the muscles of his throat aching, eyes upward watching his siblings fall like comets into the muddy soil of Earth. He certainly doesn’t fall a third time, concurrently, endlessly, irrevocably, with the confirmation on his lips in the low light only afforded by sacrilege.

  
He doesn’t look for me, hands clutching, grasping bronze. He doesn’t search till the ends of the horizon, doesn’t search as if he could expect answers from me. After all, even if he had found me, I don’t think he would have listened. There would have been no reverence. Not the same reverence as he holds for humanity. And when I don’t answer, he doesn’t ask for me with arms hung resolutely at his sides, desperation gripping the edges of his throat. He doesn’t curse me, he doesn’t doubt me, begin to wonder if I ever existed at all. He doesn’t look upon my face, doesn’t look down at me when we meet.

He doesn’t try and kill me, betray me, become me like an Oedipal cliche without a mother to lust after. He doesn’t find one--not his, but one all the same--in the vessel of a brother. A boy who grew up only ever knowing how to give love, not to look for it, not ask for it. My son doesn’t give it to Him anyway. Not in small words, ones that can’t be deflected, words more like facts than declarations. “I could go with you.” “Everyone except me.” “You have changed me.” Not in parting glances, stolen glances under lamplight. Not through sacrifice, surrendering armies, life. Not through touch--a well-placed hand over a gushing wound, arms thrown around shoulders just like he was taught. He isn’t kind, he doesn’t feel, he doesn’t love, he doesn’t disobey.

He does what he’s supposed to. He dies when he’s supposed to. He doesn’t keep coming back again and again with bloody lips and bloodier hands, crawling back to Him. When he says “family,” he means the one I made for him, the ones who I made him for. Family is not two orphaned men with scars where no one can see him, it’s not a child who misses him before he even knows his face, it’s not a young girl who knew his face before it was even his to look upon. Heaven is his home, the fluorescent hum, the tomb where memories reside. Not in a dusty house where every cupboard hides a stash of whiskey, not an underground fortress with not even a window to let in light, not a car that until recently he never had use for--he could fly, he had wings, why crush himself in the backseat.

He is my son. I am his father. For him, that means everything. He doesn’t care for the temptation of choice, of responsibility, of free will. He doesn’t care for the temptation that comes when looking upon a man’s lips, meeting eyes and holding for a second longer than he should. He doesn’t listen to Him laugh and ache at the want of it. He doesn’t watch the rise and fall of His chest and wonder what it’s like to breathe, to feel your lungs collapsing, and if it feels anything like how it feels to look upon Him while He is smiling. He doesn’t sometimes breathe for the sake of it.

To him, to serve is enough. To exist is plenty. To follow the path I’ve laid for him, it’s all that he could want. He doesn’t dream of more, doesn’t want the shape of Man, doesn’t want the crushing weight of Man over him. He doesn’t imagine a grand life, nor a small life, but a purposeful life to fulfill his role and carry it out the way he was meant to. He doesn’t think of mornings watching his child eat breakfast, nor of nights tucked in the nape of His neck. He doesn’t feel the sink of a blade collide with Death, with Darkness, with daughters known by different names. He never finds out how it feels to stand on the brink of omniscience. He never knows what it’s like to pull the threads of fate, unfurling destiny like a sweater knitted by trembling hands. He doesn’t wake up to mornings with a thick film on his tongue, hair sticking out wildly, clutching the cotton duvet tightly to take in as much warmth as he can. He doesn’t feel warmth, how sunlight sits on his skin in the Kansas summer, how bodies pressed tight run hot but stick as if to peel away from each other is to amputate a limb.

He is a soldier, a force, a dutiful son. He doesn’t look me square in the eye, he doesn’t look at me at all. He doesn’t stand before me, blade in hand, proving himself to be a better father than I could ever be. When he dies, he dies because I willed it. It was a death born of strategy, of narrativity, because that’s where the story needed it to lead. It wasn’t through eleventh-hour confession between pulsing stone walls, cheeks stained in tears and hand stained in blood. When he dies, it’s on a battlefield, not in his home, not in front of his Home, not with heart caught in his throat as he chokes. It’s for my cause, not a cause as he believes one to be. It’s engulfed in the blinding light of rage and flame, not a cold darkness that seems to seep into everything. He dies, he dies, my dutiful son, my beautiful son, out of devotion to me, not devotion to love, certainly not Him. And when he is dying, he does not smile, he does not welcome the dark in upright prostration, unadorned admiration for the one who has killed him. He does not die knowing that yes, to breathe feels so close to how love sits in your chest. Does not feel it in his son’s gaze, in his friend’s kind words, in His embrace. He does not die realizing that to love is to have faith, a faith more powerful than God. A love more powerful than mine.

I do not, will not, mourn him.


End file.
